Public lecture will address Guantanamo detentions and U.S. Supreme Court

As 2014 holders of the Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Linda Greenhouse and her husband, military justice expert attorney Eugene R. Fidell, will speak in Hawai‘i in mid-March, including a free public lecture exploring issues surrounding the Guantanamo detentions.

The lecture, “Guantanamo and the Supreme Court," is scheduled for 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 19, 2014, in the UH Law School Law Library at 2525 Dole Street. The couple will discuss issues still to be faced, including what the future holds for Guantanamo and the detainees, and what lessons may be drawn from this saga.

Visitor parking is available in the UH Mānoa Parking Structure.

Law Dean Avi Soifer said Greenhouse is a remarkably knowledgeable, cogent writer about the U.S. Supreme Court and Fidell has played a leadership role in the field of military law.

Greenhouse, who has covered the U.S. Supreme Court for 30 years for the New York Times, is now the Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. She assumed this position in 2009 after a 40-year career at the Times. Fidell is the Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale and co-founder and former president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

The endowed Inouye chair – created to bring outstanding speakers to the University who have been catalysts for democratic ideals and housed at the UH Foundation – was started in 2005 to honor Hawai‘i’s legendary senior U.S. senator and his first wife, both of whom have since passed away. It is held jointly by the William S. Richardson School of Law and the Department of American Studies.

Greenhouse and Fidell will be on the UH Mānoa campus from March17-21, and will also teach several classes and meet informally with students and faculty. Fidell previously taught at Harvard Law School and at the American University Washington College of Law.

At Yale, Greenhouse is a member of the faculty of the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic and she teaches other courses that focus on the U.S. Supreme Court. She is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including a 1998 Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University’s Kennedy School in 2004.

Fidell is of counsel at Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell in Washington, D.C., and is a life member of the American Law Institute. He is also a member of the Defense Legal Policy Board of the Department of Defense, and is on the board of directors of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War.